"Thanks, Tall and Shaggy." Massha smiled, stepping over her would-be suitor. "I have a lot of respect for Tananda's talent, so coming from you—"
She paused, a blank look on her face. I wondered if the Spectre had grabbed her leg. I glanced down, but he was out for the count.
"You okay?" I asked.
"I'm fine," Massha assured all of us. "I just felt far away for a moment."
"Oive," Mayno breathed, as he prepared to rappel down the face of Unmentionables, the gigantic underwear store in Corridor G.
"What?" Oive asked, from the rafters above him.
In the guise of a black-furred Troll, she stood with her heels braced against a joist, ready to pull Mayno up in case of trouble.
"I wasn't call-aing you," he replied. "I was just... looking down."
"Don't," Oive reminded him. "If you do, you'll lose your grip and go splat on the floor. I mean, your guts could be spread out all over the entire corridor!"
Mayno gulped. "I can't do zis!" he shrilled. "Zees is not fit activity for mall-rats. What is Rattila doing to us?"
"He thinks it gives him more of a buzz than stolen merchandise. Isn't that the weirdest thing you ever heard?" Oive's large eyes widened. "Maybe one of the personalities we brought him is making him crazy."
Mayno hastily lifted a finger to his lips. "Don't say that! He'll hear you!" He tugged on the ropes. "Can't we do this anoth-air way?"
"Find a happy place, dude," Oive advised. "Come on, pretend you're just lowering yourself into a giant cookie jar. You've got infinite pockets. Put all the cookies in the pockets..."
Mayno closed his eyes, and a blissful smile appeared on the Klahdish face he was wearing. "C'est marveilleuse. Okay, I go."
The Spectre turned out to be the first member of the newly founded Secret Admirers of Massha Fan Club. I'd wanted to split up the group into pairs, with Massha accompanying Par on his rounds, Chumley with Eskina, and me getting reacquainted—I mean patrolling—with Sibone, but I didn't like to leave her back uncovered, so to speak. Males of every species were coming out of the Mall's overly ornate woodwork to whistle, leer at, or bow to Massha.
Rimbaldi, the proprietor of The Volcano, appeared on his threshold, bowing and kissing his fingertips to her. Massha giggled like a schoolgirl. I raised my eyebrows at her.
"Well, it isn't every day someone appreciates my figure," she said. "I was so lucky to find Hugh."
"He's the lucky one," I stated. "Don't shortchange yourself."
Parvattani began to jump around as if he had a live fish in his shorts. He pulled the globe from his pocket.
"This way," he announced, pointing toward the hall to our left. His eyes danced with excitement. "It's a code S!" "S?" I asked.
"Skeeve. We gotta another sighting of your friend. I mean the perpetrator that's not your friend. He's hanging from a rope on an underwear shop."
"Good," I announced, smacking my hands together. "This time the guy's gonna get it in the shorts!"
"He fly zroo ze ayair wiz ze gray-dest of eeeze—!"
"Why is he singing like that?" Massha asked, as we homed in on Unmentionables.
"Because it isn't Skeeve," I gritted, "and I'm going to kill him."
The gangly figure of the pseudo-Klahd swung from a rope around his middle, lying flat out as if he were flying. A large crowd had gathered to point and giggle at the Klahd dangling from the store's facade. A couple of tourists with cameras were taking pictures.
"This ought to be easy," I asserted. "His eyes are closed."
Parvattani brought his globe of authority up to his mouth and started to bark out an order. "All guards—!"
"Don't do it!" Eskina warned him. "If he hears you, he will vanish again."
Par frowned, but lowered his voice to a whisper. "All guards within G sector, converge on Unmentionables. Repeat, Unmentionables. Assist in clearing the area. Apprehend suspect Skeeve."
I wasn't going to wait for the cavalry. I was about to solve my own problem.
"Massha, you have anything to cut with?"
"Sure, big spender," she replied, floating over my head. "One cut line, coming up! Or, down."
I signaled to Chumley and Eskina to fan out to the other side of the pink-painted doorway. The name Unmentionables was spelled out in fireflies that were supposed to blink in patterns, but they seemed stressed out because of the presence of an intruder swinging in front of them. um, they spelled out, some letters lit and others dark, mental, and two words that flashed in sequence, uns and
TABLE.
"Who is the idiot?" a scantily clad Deveel woman demanded, gazing up at the impostor with her hands on her hips. She caught sight of Par. "Captain! I demand you get that moron down from my storefront at once!"
"We're attempting-a to do that, madame," Par averred, saluting smartly.
Massha flew toward the swaying body like a zeppelin homing in on a target. She pushed her sleeves up purposefully and brandished a hooked amulet like a miniature scythe. I ran to position myself underneath the impostor. Massha let the spell loose. A bolt of purple fire shot out from the charm.
The fake flew upward. I looked up and saw a shadowy form on the rafters hauling on the rope like a stevedore. So they were working in teams! I flung myself at the wall and started to climb up the blinking letters.
"#@%#@*!" they read.
The fake opened his eyes and shrieked. The purple fire snaked around the rope a foot above the knot holding him up and burned right through it. He reached the beam and scrambled onto it just in time. He and his big, dark, hairy accomplice ran away along the beams under the roof. I reached the top of the storefront. It was ten or twelve feet from there to the beams. I couldn't let the phony get away again!
I pushed off with all my strength, but it wasn't enough. I grabbed air just out of reach of my target. The crowd screamed as I fell. My breath was knocked out of my body as something caught me. I tried to twist to see.
"Stop struggling, big guy," Massha grunted. "My flight belt will burn out!"
"Thanks," I gasped.
"Don't thank me," she insisted, as she brought me the rest of the way up to the white-painted beam. "Go get the phony creep!"
I didn't need the encouragement. I pulled myself upright and started running after the two thieves.
They knew their turf as well as I know every vein in my beautiful yellow eyes. They dashed toward a wall that I thought would be a dead end. At the last minute they clambered up and started running at right angles along another joist invisible against the white ceiling. I chinned up to the next level and continued my pursuit
Below me I could see the white hats of the guards jogging along, shouting warnings. Chumley made way for them, parting the crowd forcibly where necessary. Eskina, a foot shorter than the average shopper, had disappeared in the sea of heads.
Massha flanked me, readying a ring with a huge tan stone. The Skeeve kept glancing back at us, and as Massha raised her weapon, he spun on the narrow beam and pointed his joined hands at us.
"Duck!" I yelled.
Massha's eyes widened. She dove to one side as a tongue of green fire blasted by us. One of the dragonlings whom I had disturbed sleeping on the first beam let out a squawk of protest as it got a hot-seat. The beam itself was singed black for a significant diameter. I gulped. If one of us had been in the way of that spell, we would have been toast. Massha recovered quickly, firing off the ring.
A mass of writhing tan and gray flew toward the fugitives. As it neared them, it unwound into a coil of rope. The running figures flattened themselves on the beam. The rope should have followed their movements, but it expanded into a greater and greater mass and plummeted into the crowd. A cry went up as several shoppers were bound into a huge tangle with Chumley and some of the guards. An outraged, "Oh, I say!" escaped the Troll, who began to break the ropes one at a time between his mighty hands.